Fall Celebration!

Since I was nine years old, instead of trick-or-treating, my family would have a fall celebration. It included ordering pizza, dressing up, making and hitting piñatas, and other games involving candy. Since last year, the tradition now continues with my kids. I have to say I am grateful Grandma takes them to make the piñatas (okay, paint them)…I never did like that part.

 

This year Aunt Jenny also incorporated a cake walk. My sister Jenny has adored cake walks ever since she first heard of them when she was probably about Emry’s age. She made cupcakes, drew a huge circle with numbers in my parents driveway, brought out music…and the cake walk began!

 

I think my kids were as excited about that as they were the piñatas, even though they weren’t sure what a cake walk was. But it meant cupcakes in a box they had decorated, so whatever else they imagined it had to be great. And they all had great fun dancing around the circle to the music, even Ellyson for a short time. We won’t tell them the walk may have been rigged. I mean, it was a little suspicious that everyone went home with six cupcakes in their box…

 

Enjoying the cake walk!

 

This year even Ellyson got a piñata. She enjoyed giving it a couple of whacks with the bat before she got tired and Papa finished for her. She was very happy with her fruit snacks and lollipops. Especially the lollipops.

 

Ellyson with her piñata.

 

Emry the prairie girl, Ethan the storm trooper, and Ellyson the skeleton.

What to do When I'm not Working

I’m a bit of a workaholic. The person who brings her work laptop on vacation. The one who wished she had brought it to the hospital when she had her youngest (especially as we couldn’t leave our room for 48 hours!). Or brought it to her father-in-law’s funeral last year to find a bit of sanity in the insanity of those several days. So, when given a forced “vacation” this week…well, I’m rather at a loss on what I’m supposed to do with all my spare time.

 

On Friday, I only worked an hour. I’ve been putting extra hours in earlier in the week so on Friday I can catch up with other stuff. Rather amazingly, I didn’t touch it Saturday. But I opened it Sunday evening to do my weekly Sunday night task and…had no internet connection. In fact, my wireless card wasn’t reading any wifi in the neighborhood (and probably every house has it as I usually see at least a dozen networks). I tried all the basic troubleshooting. And then I stated searching my phone for the more complicated troubleshooting. When absolutely nothing worked, I emailed our IT guy and used my personal laptop to complete my weekly task.

 

On Monday, I spent 2 ½ hours troubleshooting between our in-house IT guru, my own research and a long phone call with our contracted IT people. It wasn’t easy since we only have wireless in the house so I couldn’t get online in another way to allow them access to my laptop. But in the end, even the IT guy concluded: the wireless card was damaged. I could do nothing until it was fixed.

 

Tuesday led to the immediate fix: order an external wireless card. But as that was still going to take two days to arrive at my house, I was left with hours on my hands to fill with…I wasn’t even sure where to start. I had one work task I could accomplish with my personal laptop online, stuff on my work laptop desktop, and a zip drive. A half hour of frustration on a task that would normally take me ten minutes. Same thing today as I continue to wait and hope the wireless card gets here early tomorrow versus late. Meanwhile…

 

It’s strange. I have lots of projects sitting around waiting to get done (blogs to post, various things to fix, documents to print, Christmas things to prepare, etc.), but I wasn’t sure which ones to conquer first. And aside from finally posting blogs, most of them aren’t getting done any faster than I usually get them done between my work hours. I’ve adjusted so well to working hours in a day and conquering tasks in between those hours that having endless hours in which to do them seems to lesson my efficiency. And I still can’t shake the feeling that I really don’t know what to do with myself if I’m not filling every waking moment with something pressing.

 

Basically: I don’t know how to rest and relax very well.

 

Ed keeps saying I’ve earned a few days off. I should sit down or something. Maybe tomorrow I will. I’ve been wanting to call Allyson for weeks but haven’t had time. And now , it seems, I have all the time in the world!

Carving Pumpkins

Last year when we carved pumpkins, Emry and Ethan drew me step-by-step directions. This year I guess we have advanced in our skills since we didn’t need directions. We pretty much just jumped into it!

 

Ethan and Emry both did a very good job cleaning out their own pumpkins once I cut the top off. Our little neighbor girl Ava came over to help, too. And once she was up from her morning “nap”, Ellyson wanted to be right in the middle of it all, too.  She was right in the middle of the pumpkins I cleaned out to use for breads, pies, and other things. 

 

Except for Emry, they then each drew the faces they wanted on their pumpkins. I did the carving, which is never very easy. But they all turned out well, and the kids were very happy!

 

                                                        Emry and Ava working on their pumpkins.

 

Ethan cleaning out his pumpkin.

 

Ellyson helping everyone!

 

The end results!

Homeschooling Magazines

Are there homeschool magazines anymore? I’m assuming there probably are. If I wanted to receive such a thing, I would certainly rather have it in paper form than on my phone or something. Today, though, it seems like there are enough homeschooling moms out there with blogs on homeschooling advice that homeschooling magazines wouldn’t make a lot of money.

 

I remember homeschool magazines. We received one or two as I was growing up. I remember flipping through them, reading some of the articles. Not because I needed advice on how to homeschool my kids but because I read anything that had words on it.  I don’t remember anything particular about their content, but I do remember their covers. Perfect little homeschool families, some with only a few kids and others with a baseball team of them. All well dressed, all in perfectly clean houses, and all sitting at tables or desks working hard on their assignments or helping their moms in the kitchen. And I remember wondering how those moms kept such clean homes with kids who happily sat down to work on their math and rejoiced in helping in the kitchen. The epitome of homeschooling. And one my family never reached.

 

To be honest, I preferred my own home. The one that wasn’t always clean, even though mom had rules about keeping things cleaned. The one where we didn’t always work on our assignments without complaining and grumbling at our lot in life or the amount of sentences we had to diagram. The home where we did try to get out of chores, and we did whine when something seemed unfair about what we got compared to what X sibling got. It’s true my parents had high standards on our behavior. And it’s true my dad could come down hard on us for crossed lines. But at least, in the end, they didn’t expect us to be perfect. At least not all the time.

 

As I entered high school, we started a curriculum that put us in the midst of those homeschooling magazine families. At least, that’s what you had to make your family sound like. When you talked with your peers, you didn’t mention that sometimes you read a “romance” novel, or you didn’t get up at five in the morning to read your Bible, or you played basketball in shorts.You didn’t mention the reality of your family – only the part you would want printed in a magazine if you achieved such a status. It was awful. No one was really your friend. No one was real. And, in the end, no one cared unless your “perfect” family matched up to their “perfect” family. No wonder twenty years later so many of our families have ended up just about as imperfect as you can imagine.

 

So, as I have started on my own homeschooling journey, I have kept the perfectionism part as far away as I can. Our house is not perfectly neat. Emry and Ethan do gripe and complain about completing their assignments. And I do have to nag them about chores. Nor are they so far advanced in their educational endeavors that Ivy League colleges are already knocking on our door. Emry struggles with reading. Ethan struggles with a pair of scissors and writing many of his letters. And Ellyson wanders in and out of the school room either making a mess of all sorts of things or wanting to be right in the middle of it all. Some days I want to pull the hair out of my head and figure if I can just send them out into the world knowing how to read and do basic math before I die of frustration, I have conquered the mountain. 

 

Thankfully, the other homeschool moms I’m friends with have the same struggles. Well, not necessarily the same, but we do all have messy houses full of griping kids who frustrate us when, at times, they can’t seem to understand the very basics of word pronunciations. However, the other day as I stood in Emry’s room where Emry and Ethan work on their assignments every morning, I couldn’t help snapping this very rarephoto. In fact, I don’t think our makeshift school room as ever looked like this…or will ever look like this again. And since it lasted all of thirty second before Ellyson was off to pull Emry’s dolls out of the bucket, Emry was off to join her, and Ethan was left to complain about his math…the fact that I had that moment to snap this photo is pretty impressive:

 

 

As one friend said: “That should be on the cover of a homeschooling magazine!”

The Little Man in the Middle

A year ago, Ethan was still in adjustment mode. Ellyson’s birth rocked his world, as I knew it would. He doesn’t know life without Emry, so an older sibling is just life. But a baby sister? One who requires a lot of Mama’s attention? Or gets a lot of attention just because she’s a cut baby? Some moments of acting out were perfectly expected.

 

Now? He’s found his groove. His niche. His safe spot. The other night as I put all three of them in the bathtub (not something that normally happens, but he’s been sick and I was trying to get them all to soak in warm water with essential oils, etc.), I was putting Ellyson in last and he pipes up, “No, Mama! On this side! I’m in the middle. I’m the middle-est!”

 

Now, it seems, he doesn’t remember life without Ellyson.

 

We have three strollers: the jogging stroller we purchased before Emry was born, an umbrella stroller for ease, and a double jogging stroller bought when I was pregnant with Ethan. It hasn’t seen as many miles as the jogging stroller since I was out nearly every day running with Emry as an infant, but it was a much bigger hassle and not easy maneuvering with both Ethan and Emry. And since they are now more-or-less too big for a stroller, I just use the jogging one for Ellyson. But he was having  4-year-old moment when he didn’t want to walk so I pulled out the double-stroller so he could ride with Ellyson for our little walk. 

 

“Which seat do you want, Ethan?” I asked.

 

He stood there for a moment and then said, “Mmh…which was is the middle-est?”

 

I did not have an answer which seat of two is the “middle-est” and I’m not sure how he decided, but he climbed in and off we went. 

 

One day, I’m sure, he’ll once again complain about being the middle child. For now, though, he’s quite happy in his little spot between two sisters.

 

The little man keeps getting bigger. Like Emry, math has come easy for him. He loves flash cards, especially the 2’s. Since his letter sounds were elusive when we started Kindergarten, I didn’t have high expectations of his putting words together until at last Christmas. However, he’s sounding out words and even telling me things like, “That ‘e’ is silent!” Penmanship is sometimes creative in the forming of some letters, but we’re working on that! 

 

He’s also delighted that he is now in Cubbies on Wednesday evenings. Covid postponed his introduction into that class, so he’s really happy he can now go. We get in the car Wednesday nights, and he’s talking a mile a minute with everything he got to do. He always has the same question: “Mama, is Cubbie real?”

 

His newest love? The Wii. A few months ago I pulled my old Wii out of a box in the garage and set it up. With the nice weather, they hadn’t played on it too much. Now it’s rainy quite a bit…and I need to purchase a timer. If I let him, he’d spend all day sword fighting, playing tennis, and flying airplanes!

Oh, the Places I have Lived! - Part 13

And – finally – we come to my current place of residence. I know I wrote a blog nearly three years ago when we moved into our little rental house of the quirky little things in it. Like no normal light bulbs. I feel like every time one goes out, we have to go to Home Depot and buy some special bulb. There’s a price to pay for being “retro”. One I wouldn’t pay if I didn’t have to have lights in my kitchen to cook by.

 

I was right about the “retro” wall behind our bed. It’s tiled with a frame around it – a great cobweb collector. Very festive this time of year.

 

I think the house is built on ant farms. And they have Ethan’s number. As soon as he drops a crumb, they come running. They’re also happy Ellyson has joined us. She likes to drop crumbs, too. I’ve figured out how to keep them out momentarily from time to time, but there is no way to eradicate them. I guess they help me keep my floors clean.

 

All in all, we’re happy with our little three-bedroom place. Larger rooms would be nice, especially ones with more natural light. But, we’re creative in how we make the space work. The one major thing we would change is adding a bathroom – at least a half one. That would make a ton of difference. I can’t help hoping against hope we could find a house of our own before Ellyson is potty training and adds to the bathroom congestion, especially in light of how much time a potty-training toddler sometimes has to spend in the bathroom! 

 

We’re very grateful for our little rental place, even as we dream of something larger we can truly call our own.

Sixteen Months!

I don’t suppose there is anything particularly special about being 16 months old, but she has now hit a very important milestone: walking!!!!

 

Ellyson actually danced before she walked. The first video I have of her getting up on her own two feet without holding onto anything is as she plays with her Baby Shark book that plays six or eight different songs. Shelovesmusic and she loves to dance, so she’s pulls herself up and starts moving back and forth to the music. When it’s done, she very carefully leans over, pushes one of the buttons, and dances again. She did this nearly two weeks before she walked.

 

The last time we saw my sister Abby, she kept telling Ellyson to walk. “I know you can do it – you just won’t. So walk.” Ellyson can be like Abby in many ways, so simply telling her to do it wouldn’t work. In fact, it would make her even more unlikely to do it. And, in some ways, it got to that point. You can see as she stood in the middle of the room that she knew she could step in one direction or another. She just wouldn’t. Then, one day, she did. It was only a few steps at first, then a laugh as she’d get down and crawl off. When Emry and Ethan tried to practice with her by sitting on the living room floor and calling her name, she would choose to walk to Emry, laugh if Ethan beckoned her, and then walk awayfrom him.

 

Yes, she has his number.

 

Gradually, it just became more and more steps. When she figured out she could carry things when walking, that seemed to be the deciding factor on using her newly acquired skill over crawling. It allows her to leave a much bigger trail all over the house. She’s been consistently walking for days now, but it’s still a bit of a surprise to turn and see her toddling into the room – always in search of something she can get into! 

Oh, the Places I have Lived! - Part 12

To be honest, I ‘m not sure what I thought Pittsburgh would be like. I had been there one time prior to marrying Ed and I found the whole few days there confusing and overwhelming. At the time, I figured it was because I had to meet his mom, his dad, his uncle, his brother and family, and his best friend and family. A lot to take in. Not to mention all the things he wanted to show me: Mount Washington, Ohiopyle, Kennywood, and old haunts like schools, houses, parks, etc. It was all so much I didn’t put a whole lot of thought into what the place was actually like, how it connected, or the fact that I wasn’t technically in the City of Pittsburgh but for a very small portion of that trip. I didn’t realize then that when people of Pittsburgh say they are from Pittsburgh they mean the entire county of Allegheny, plus most of Beaver, Butler, and other surrounding counties thrown in for good measure.

 

I started to realize the vast scope and strangeness of that city when trying to help Ed find a place he could rent and have ready upon my arrival. It was very difficult to know where anything was located just by seeing the name of the township, borough, municipality, etc. listed on the advertisement. A map didn’t help me much. I got turned around looking at a map of Pittsburgh so quickly I couldn’t tell north from south anymore. When I arrived a week before our wedding, I soon found out why. Even Google maps had trouble navigating the streets of Pittsburgh. The common phrase the natives use – “You can’t get there from here” – is the truest statement I ever heard in that City. I think our out-of-town wedding guests were quite happy when they got to leave the strange place. 

 

But I had to stay. Now you know since we’re on Part 12 of all the places I have lived, that I have made some moves that were culture shocks. But none of those compared to Pittsburgh. The first week after we were married I sat in a laundry mat listening to a couple of locals talk in with such an awful Pittsburgh accent I thought I had moved to a foreign country. I soon learned that people from the “South Hills” didn’t go to the “North Hills” and vice versa. Literally. Some had never crossed the river. It was like their own miniature War of Northern  Agresssion without the war part. Ed would drive me around so I was so lost I couldn’t have gotten back home with a map. And I never did completely adjust to that culture. Mostly I didn’t want to.

 

But the places we lived were nice enough for a big city. The first wasn’t a five minute drive to downtown (if all the lights were green and traffic was light). Right along the Ohio River, it was in a little town called Avalon. We lived in the bottom off of a house a guy had bought and made it to a duplex. We were his first downstairs tenants so everything was fresh and new. Ed hated having people stomp above his head, but he didn’t grow up with a houseful of siblings that were always banging around like I did. It never bothered me. It was a simple little two bedroom, one bath, tiny kitchen, living area and dining room with a decent basement for laundry and storage. Nothing fancy, but lots of windows for natural light and high ceilings. I think we would have stayed there, but we couldn’t have two kids in the duplex and we wanted to save a little money since I wouldn’t be working (supposedly) after Ethan arrived. So, we moved out not quite a month after Ethan was born.

 

We moved right down the Ohio River into Beaver county (where it was slightly cheaper to live) in a little worn out town called Rochester. History will say it was once a booming community right where the Beaver River flows into the Ohio. It had a huge hospital, glass factories, and wealthy people in their nice homes. Those days are long gone. The main street looks like a ghost town and the once grand houses are dilapidated, cut up into apartments, or simply wasting away empty. We found a side-by-side duplex there. Two bedrooms and a bath upstairs, a living area/dining room and kitchen with a half bath on the main floor, and a mostly finished basement with an unfinished section for laundry and storage. It was tight in many places, but it was also nice in other ways. If the stairs hadn’t been so open and the kids so young, it would have suited even better. And there was no way to beat what a great landlord we had. We got to know him really well. He even offered to keep the other side of the place empty and quiet if we’d stay. Unfortunately, it was going to take more than that to get me to stay in Pittsburgh. For when the Lord opened the door to  move to Indiana, I couldn’t run fast enough!